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We had been awaiting the “landing” of RocketSpace in London with considerable anticipation, knowing how closely the RocketSpace philosophy aligns with our own and of its noteworthy success in San Francisco. No less than 18 of the tech-startups it has supported have achieved billion-dollar valuations. Whilst unicorn status is not the be all and end all, to have nurtured a stable of so many is validation of its approach and not to be sneezed at.

With his team, Duncan Logan, Founder and CEO of RocketSpace, has focused on cultivating an ecosystem which provides the optimal conditions necessary for young companies to thrive and grow, but more than that, to do so at an accelerated pace, benefitting the companies, their investors and clients alike.

Each one of RocketSpace’s global tech campuses provides access to growth-oriented amenities, programming, introductions to top venture capitalists, as well as corporates, and more, making it a premium international coworking community for tech startups ready to scale. Importantly, those that seek to do so into overseas markets, such as Juno’s own portfolio companies, will find a “home from home” at each of the campuses. Familiar “plug and play” premises, a ready-made network of warm introductions, assistance with relocation, and local trusted corporate advisers, all help to mitigate the arguably distracting effect of establishing a foot-hold in a new territory so that companies can hit the ground running and, it could be said, with a considerable head start.

With the London campus opening, we had an encouraging conversation with Priya Guha, Ecosystem General Manager in London, shortly after, since which we have been working actively together to develop the relationship. I have spent time working from the campus and Priya’s team has introduced us to numerous promising resident companies. One of their most promising, however, needed no introduction, as our own portfolio company, CloudIQ, has already relocated to the campus to accommodate its need for additional space and to benefit from access to the global ecosystem noted above as it fulfills its growth ambitions further.

The Juno team are therefore delighted to announce that we are now officially a RocketSpace partner and engaged member of its international ecosystem. We very much look forward to working with Priya and her team, contributing to the global community and to sharing its success with our investors and portfolio companies.

In light of which, we are also pleased to announce that Juno will be relocating from our offices in Henry Wood House to the RocketSpace campus in London with effect from 23rd March 2018.

Our new address from 23rd March will be as follows: -

Our telephone and mobile numbers, as well as our email addresses, will remain unchanged.Please do not send any post to Henry Wood House after that date as it may not reach us.

Should you wish to know more, have any questions or queries about our partnership with RocketSpace, or indeed wish to explore corporate partnership for your own organisation, please do not hesitate to contact us.

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Purple WiFi, the UK-based WiFi social login and location analytics platform today announced new funding to accelerate its rapid international expansion. The $5m funding was led by Sir Terry Leahy, Bill Currie, Iain MacDonald and Bob Willett from the William Currie Group with participation from Juno Capital a leading Angel Syndicate. Purple WiFi allows users to gain free access to a public WiFi network through their existing social media accounts or a short form. The user gets access to family friendly WiFi, while the benefit to the business hosting the service (such as a restaurant, hotel, shop, museum, sports stadium or shopping mall) is that they are rewarded with valuable analytic insights into the profiles and movements of their customers and a sophisticated built-in marketing platform.Purple WiFi have also appointed new board members as part of the process, including: Sir Terry Leahy, former Tesco CEO who took the retailer from the third largest in the UK to the third largest retailer in the world, launching the Clubcard during his tenure; and Ian Kelly, Serial Entrepreneur in Telecoms, Energy and other markets.The large scale investment interest from both the retail and telecoms sectors demonstrates a recognition of the value and potential for WiFi in these verticals; incorporating the future of shopping, showrooming and enhancing customer experiences in-store for retail, and telecoms recognising the need for valid data offload solutions.Additional investors include: Bill Currie, Iain MacDonald and Bob Willett from the William Currie Group; Jonathan Hammond and Steve Ashton from the beverage distribution industry; Juno Capital a leading Angel Syndicate, including high profile investors such as Sir Nigel Rudd, Chairman at Heathrow Airport Holdings Limited (formerly BAA) and formerly Chairman Alliance Boots, and three senior Ernst and Young partners, who facilitated the round.Purple WiFi was originally established due to a recognition of the world’s growing need for fast, free public WiFi. The service has been purposefully designed to be user friendly, to be technology ‘agnostic’, cloud based and scalable across geographic boundaries. It meets the growing user demand for fast, secure WiFi enabled spaces, with the added value of giving something back to the company who invested in the WiFi.Purple WiFi’s social media authentication covers an extensive number of global social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, Google and Instagram, with Chinese Weibo and Russian VKontakte coming soon. The login journey and analytics platform auto-translates into 18 languages.Thousands of venues globally have already been secured, with strongholds in Europe, Asia-pac and the Americas. Deep technology partnerships have already been established, most notably with Cisco, Verizon, Telstra and Vodafone, but also many others. A channel organisation, Purple WiFi have distribution agreements with Ingram Micro and Westcon Comstor who are the two biggest in the world, along with a number of country specific ones.Sir Terry Leahy, former Tesco CEO, comments: “Having been in the retail space for many years, I have seen how technology has and will continue to revolutionise the industry. Purple WiFi is a brilliant example of how additional value can be driven from an existing infrastructure. I’ve been incredibly impressed with what Gavin and the team have achieved to date. I very much look forward to helping them drive global expansion and adoption.”Gavin Wheeldon, CEO, Purple WiFi comments: “WiFi is something that is expected, for free, just as we expect access to heat, light and water. But the big question in recent years has been how to monetise WiFi. Purple WiFi has created an innovative low cost solution that gives unprecedented analytics and insights, whilst driving true ROI for businesses. We have seen unimaginable interest and demand for the product, not just within the obvious sectors of retail, leisure and hospitality, but also unexpected sectors such as social housing, education and healthcare, where they want to use WiFi to communicate better and deliver services. I’m absolutely delighted with this new investment and expertise, which will help us accelerate our product feature set and further build out the team that I am already very proud of.”

We are delighted to announce that we have joined the UK Business Angels Association (UKBAA).The UKBAA is doing a great job promoting Angel investing activities around the UK and we look forward to working alongside them on a few initiatives shortly.

In a sign that equity crowd financing is taking off in the UK is the news that NearDesk — a startup that offers touch-out and rent desk and meeting space by the hour at different locations all around the UK – has broken the record for the amount raised on the Seedrs platform. Originally NearDesk was looking to raise £600k, but it’s busted that limit, raising just over £1m.
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